.xxx left undone

Plans for the controversial domain are pulled just before being completed. Who …

The 24th International Public Meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) started off with a bang. After approving, then delaying, then approving the .xxx TLD, ICANN has once again delayed it. Vint Cerf, Chair of the ICANN Board, announced the topic would not be part of the Board meeting tomorrow because of time constraints. Cerf asserted that the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee would have to first review the 350 page feasibility study released over two months ago.

For those who don't remember, the US Chamber of Commerce received a deluge of 6000 e-mails earlier this year regarding the TLD. The Family Research Council, a conservative Christian organization, encouraged people to pressure the US Chamber of Commerce with letters like this:

I oppose the establishment of the .XXX domain. I do not want to give pornographers more opportunities to distribute smut on the Internet. By establishing this new .XXX domain, you would be giving false hope to parents who want to protect their families from pornography. You would also be lending legitimacy to the hardcore pornography industry. Please stop this effort now.

The US Chamber of Commerce in turn pressured ICANN in August to consider the "impact" of the TLD further, and so they did, the consideration supposedly having given way to approval today. Stewart Lawley, the head of the ICM Registry which has sponsored .xxx, was even present and scheduled to give a presentation on the TLD. Needless to say, he was likely caught with his pants down, metaphorically speaking, of course. The fate of .xxx is now uncertain, with no timetable having been given for the latest review process.

In a way, the debate over .xxx seems irrelevant, in that pornography will continue to be the focus of portions of the Internet with or without a TLD. Those supporting the domain assert the TLD would be an unambiguous reference point and make filtering easier. Critics argue it would just be one more place for porn on the Internet, but the real question is not about where the porn is, or even porn at all. It is simply who controls the Internet?

The rumor in Vancouver is that it was EU Commissioner Viviane Redding that squelched .xxx, the same Viviane Redding who warned of an "Internet meltdown" unless the US ceded administrative control of the Internet to an international private-public partnership. We all know how that turned out. At the World Summit on the Information Society, the US refused to cede any control and everyone else complained bitterly and then went along. Does anybody really think it's any different this time?